


burn away the old (to welcome in the new)

by 1848pianist



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Mind-Reading, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Healing, Huddling For Warmth, Imbolc, Protective Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Spring Cleaning, Traumatized Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Trial Of The Grasses (The Witcher), Winter At Kaer Morhen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29155941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1848pianist/pseuds/1848pianist
Summary: Yennefer goes exploring at Kaer Morhen and digs up a few painful memories.
Relationships: Eskel & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 20
Kudos: 82
Collections: A Witcher Wheel of the Year 2021





	burn away the old (to welcome in the new)

**Author's Note:**

> I took the “spring cleaning” prompt and ran away with it, lol

The smell hits him first, the scent of herbs and spirits mingling with the stench of worse things, vomit and blood. He stops in the doorway, overwhelmed by a flood of memories and sensations. He can taste them in the back of his throat.

Yennefer looks up from the chest she’s dragged out into the middle of the floor.

“Geralt. What’s the matter?”

He shakes his head. He’s mistaken; he must be. Imagining things.

Yennefer stands up. “Geralt?” She walks towards him, her brow furrowing with worry. He sways and clings to the door frame for support.

“You look about to collapse. Did something happen?” She puts her hand to his side, looking him up and down for injuries. “Are you hurt?”

Again, he shakes his head.

“What, then?”

“That smell,” he manages to choke out.

Her frown deepens as she inhales. “It is a bit musty, I suppose. I don’t smell anything else. I’ll open the window if you like, but it’s still terribly cold outside.”

“Yen, what’s in that chest?” He puts his hand to his face, trying to steady himself.

“Some empty vials and spare clothes. I’ve only just opened it. Why?”

“Why—what are you doing with it?”

She shrugs, still studying him with concern. “Spring cleaning, I guess you could call it. I was curious what you witchers keep around here in this decaying fortress.”

“Close it. Please.”

“All right.” She gives him a final searching look and puts her hand on his forearm, squeezing once before turning back to the chest and shutting the lid.

“Better?”

He nods. Thanks to the drafts that pervade Kaer Morhen, the smell is already dissipating. It fades even more quickly when Yennefer throws open the room’s narrow window. He walks slowly over to the bed and sits down, looking up only when she perches next to him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you didn’t want me to pry.”

“It’s not that.” He closes his eyes, trying to focus on the scent of her perfume rather than the lingering chemical smell.

“Should I leave you alone?”

“No,” he says, too quickly.

She moves closer, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her chin by his collarbone. The contact helps to ground him, to slow his breathing and stop his racing thoughts.

“Sorry,” he manages. He still feels shaky, bile rising in the back of his throat no matter how hard he forces it back down.

“Don’t be.” She drops her head, pressing her lips to the point of of his shoulder.

He shakes his head. It feels ridiculous, utterly ridiculous, to be so shaken by a smell.

“It isn’t ridiculous. Smell is the most powerful trigger of memory there is,” Yennefer says before she realizes he hasn’t spoken aloud. “Sorry. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

He grunts, hoping she’ll leave it at that.

She stands up abruptly, throwing a fur-lined cloak around her shoulders before returning to stand in front of him.

“Come and walk with me. If we’re going to freeze, we may as well be outside.”

He follows her. Outside the keep, the air is crisp and smells only of snow. Soon enough it will be spring elsewhere on the Continent, but here in the north the ground is still frozen and blanketed in white. It will be some time yet before the first buds and shoots brave the cold.

Yennefer shivers even in her furs, walking close to Geralt as they make their way past the keep’s inner walls. The cold is intense enough to keep his brothers inside as well, so it’s only the two of them under the vast, pale sky.

She stops a little ways beyond the outermost wall. He stops, too. She glances towards him.

“I have a feeling you know the contents of that crate better than I do.”

After a moment, he nods. “Yes.”

“Will you tell me?”

“What difference will it make?” He scowls, staring at the ground.

“Perhaps none. Perhaps a great deal.” She spreads her hands. “It’s your choice. I won’t press. I didn’t intend to read your thoughts earlier.”

“I know.” He looks up, staring out at the mountains beyond them. Once those mountains were the borders of his world. Later, they marked his way home. He doesn’t know what they mean to him now.

“It held the things from my Trials. The first ones, which everyone received, and the later ones, which only I survived.”

Yennefer nods, as though this only confirms what she already suspected.

“That doesn’t seem to surprise you.”

“I understand it. Your reaction. I shouldn’t like to relive my own transformation.” She doesn’t look at him, still following his gaze to the mountains in the distance.

A deep silence in which only the sound of the wind can be heard falls between them. Seeing Yennefer’s shoulders hunch against the cold, he puts his arm around her, letting her share in his warmth. She sighs and relaxes into him.

The cold is beginning to clear his head, pushing away the pain and nausea. He breathes in as deeply as he can and tries to focus on the solid warmth of Yennefer beside him.

“We ought to burn it.”

He lifts his face from her hair. “Hmm?”

“The things in that chest. A bonfire sounds lovely just now, don’t you think?” She leans her head back against his shoulder, looking up at him.

“Hmm. You might be right.”

Wrapping his arms more tightly around her waist, he ducks his head to kiss her neck just beneath the corner of her jaw. She lifts her chin, arching back against him and raising her hand to his face.

“Has the thought of a fire gotten you hot and bothered?” she asks, smiling at the corner of her mouth.

He lets his teeth scrape gently against her throat. “Just trying to warm you up.”

“Hmm. It seems to be working.”

She turns to face him so she can kiss him properly, putting her arms around his neck. All he can smell is her, the heat of her hands and face in sharp contrast to the freezing air around them. He breathes her in, forgetting everything else.

He holds her even closer when she comes up for air, relishing the weight of her arms around him and her head on his shoulder. They stand there for a long time like that until Yen begins to shiver again.

She huddles against him. “Shall we go back? It’ll be getting dark soon.”

“All right.” He feels steadier now, less like a boy of twelve who had no control over what was about to happen to him. He doesn’t look forward to seeing the contents of the chest again, but the prospect of setting them ablaze is its own small form of comfort.

Yennefer steps back from him, meeting his eyes with her own steady violet gaze. “Whatever may be to come, you will never suffer that again. I swear it.”

He nods.

She cups the side of his face in her hand for a moment, then laces their fingers together, leading him back towards the keep. He would follow her anywhere, he thinks, even if she led him into the mountains in the dead of winter. He’d go anywhere she wanted.

She looks back at him, either reading his mind or simply guessing his thoughts. She smirks, an expression that looks sardonic but he knows to be genuine.

The chest is waiting for them when they reach the top of the tower, so small for a thing so momentous. Yennefer brushes her hand across the small of his back as she moves to close the window again.

“We’ll light the fire at dusk.” She looks back at him over her shoulder. “More dramatic that way.”

He shakes his head and goes to stand beside her at the window, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his head on her shoulder.

“So, you’re saying we have an hour to kill?”

“Mm. Precisely.”

They’re both substantially warmer an hour later, as the sun sets outside in a riot of color. Geralt runs his fingers across Yennefer’s bare shoulder.

“Time to get up.”

“If you insist,” she says, sitting up and shrugging her dress back on. She shakes out her hair and stands, waiting for him at one end of the chest.

“I can carry it,” he tells her.

“Don’t be silly. Take the other side.”

Together they carry it down the stairs and out into the keep’s inner courtyard. Geralt gathers some of the wood that they use to heat the main hall and sets about building a bonfire that will burn long and hot. He looks to Yennefer when he finishes.

“I think you ought to do it,” she says. “Better that way.”

He nods and casts Igni, setting the kindling alight. Compared to Yennefer’s spells, his Signs seem fairly pathetic, but they’re enough to get the fire going.

He opens the chest, the smell not so overwhelming now, standing outside with smoke flooding his senses. He grabs the first thing he sees, a handful of empty vials, and throws them into the fire as the bigger logs start to catch. They shatter in a satisfying crunch of glass. He watches the cork stoppers ignite with a bright, short-lived blaze.

The flickering light plays across Yennefer’s face, making her eyes flash. “Keep going.”

He throws another fistful of vials. One of them still contains the remnants of something flammable and explodes on contact with the bonfire. Yennefer puts out her hand, magically preventing any stray shards of glass from reaching them.

Geralt waits until the fire is truly blazing before moving on to the chest’s other contents. There’s a shirt stained down the front, blood or vomit, he doesn’t know, leather bands that once pinned his hands to the operating table, a bandage with marked with twin bloodstains, like a parody of eyes. More flasks and bottles. A cracked tooth.

He casts Igni again, feeding the flames that destroy his past. Again, and again, until the bonfire roars and the heat is nearly unbearable.

Yennefer nods her approval, resting her hand on his arm. She licks the taste of ash off her lips.

“Good. Well done.”

By now, the noise and display have attracted the attention of the witchers in the keep. Eskel comes out to meet them, raising an eyebrow when he sees Geralt’s half-wild expression.

“Things left over from the Trials,” Yennefer explains.

Eskel nods, gazing into the flames.

After a moment, he turns back to the keep, returning some minutes later with another crate over his shoulder. He tosses the box’s whole contents into the fire without ceremony.

“Fuck that,” he says, walking over to lay a hand on Geralt’s shoulder. “We should have done this years ago.”

Geralt nods, still transfixed by the bonfire. His touch is steadying, grounding. Geralt reaches up and puts his hand over Eskel’s.

They stand there without speaking, the three of them, until the fire burns out hours later. Yennefer conjures a sheet of water to douse the remaining smoldering logs in a hiss of steam. Dawn is just beginning to break over the mountains. Geralt can smell the first hints of warmer weather in the air.

“That’s done,” Yennefer announces, her breath visible in the cold.

“Not quite,” Geralt says. He walks over to the chest, now empty, and brings it over to her, setting it down at her feet. She looks up at him, one eyebrow raised.

“Make it yours," he says. "Keep the things you want to have for next winter.”

She looks up at him, eyes filled with understanding, and nods. He leans forward to kiss her, deep and slow.

“Thank you.” He rests his forehead against hers. "For all of this."

When he looks up, Eskel has already turned to go. Geralt catches up to him as the three of them walk back to the keep. Eskel turns towards him, pulling him in for a hug with the familiarity of knowing him for a century and more. Without speaking, they understand each other perfectly.

Eskel slaps him on the back. “Come on, Wolf. It’s freezing out here.”


End file.
